Dawn let the silence sit between them a moment longer than was comfortable. Warren felt it settle on his bare shoulders, on the black bob that swung against his jaw, and he understood, in the way he always understood with her, that the silence was a door she was waiting for him to walk through.

"You look good enough to eat, my little sexdoll," she said at last. Her eyes traveled him the way they had a hundred times that evening, but slower now, hungrier, and she let her tongue touch her bottom lip before she went on. "Far too delicious to be hidden here in this apartment."

Warren's hands were still at his sides. He had learned not to cover himself, not since the first night. The breast plate sat heavy and warm against his chest, the harness straps cut across his ribs, and below the flat steel cap the small trapped weight of him hung cold and quiet. He made himself meet her eyes. "Where would you take me?" he asked, and his voice came out thinner than he wanted.

"Out." Dawn crossed to the hall closet and pulled from it a garment bag he did not recognize, matte black, the zipper running its full length. She laid it across the back of the sofa and drew the zipper down with a sound like a slow breath. The coat inside was PVC, a deep oxblood shine, and it caught the lamplight and threw it back in a long wet gleam. "I had it sent to the concierge. You've been so good about your little deliveries, I thought you deserved a present."

"It's—" Warren stopped. He reached out and touched the sleeve. The material was cool and slick under his fingers, softer than he expected, and his own reflection slid across it, warped and red. "It's very shiny."

"It's for you. Obviously." Dawn lifted it free of the bag and held it open, and Warren saw the shape of it now: fitted, belted at the waist, the hem cut high and cruel. "Arms in. Come on."

He slid his arms into the sleeves. The lining was cold against his bare skin and he shivered, and Dawn laughed softly and pulled the coat closed over his chest. The breast plate pressed flat beneath it. She cinched the belt at his waist and pulled it tight, tighter, until he made a small sound, and then she buckled it and smoothed the PVC down over his hips with the flat of her hand.

"Look at yourself," she said, and turned him toward the mirror by the door.

Warren looked. The coat nipped his waist into something narrow and expensive, and the hem—the hem stopped two inches below the flat locked cage, two inches below the small trapped weight of his sissy balls, and below that his legs were bare and smooth and long, shaved to the skin, and the mules put him up on his toes so his calves flexed and his thighs looked longer than they had any right to. The ring pulled tight and flush against his tummy, the straps showing through the PVC where it clung, and the steel cap sat there at the hemline like a small cold secret. No bra. No panties. Nothing under it but the plate and the harness and the lock. "Oh," he said. Just that.

"Oh," Dawn echoed, and came up behind him. Her hands found his waist and her chin found his shoulder, and her reflection joined his in the glass—taller, dark, in the wet-look dress, her platinum hair catching the same lamplight. "You look like something for sale. You know that? Like a window in Amsterdam. The girl behind the glass at midnight, red light on her skin, and every man on the street slowing down to look." Her fingers walked down the coat's front, over the belt, and stopped at the hem. "The whore in the shadows. That's what I've made of you, and I'm not finished."

Warren's throat worked. In the mirror his face was pink under the makeup, the black bob framing it, and his eyes were too bright, and he could not look away from the hemline, from the two bare inches of thigh and the steel beneath. "Dawn—"

"We're going to a club." She said it lightly, the way she said everything that was going to ruin him. "A fetish club. Lower Manhattan. I've had a membership for a week, waiting for you to be ready."

"A—" He turned in her arms. "I can't. Dawn, I can't go out like this. The doorman. The street. There'll be people—"

"There will be people." She caught his chin between her thumb and forefinger and held it. "That's rather the point. When we step inside, you take the coat off."

The room went very quiet. Warren heard the rain on the window, the hum of the refrigerator, his own blood in his ears.

"The coat comes off at the door," Dawn said, "and everyone sees the sissy. The plate. The harness. The little locked cock. All of it, revealed, and you standing there in your mules with your painted mouth, humiliated and ashamed and hungry." Her thumb moved across his lip and came away with a smear of gloss. "That's what you are tonight. A thing on display."

Warren's eyes stung. He wanted to say no. He wanted to say yes. What came out was, "They'll laugh at me."

"Some of them will." Dawn did not soften it. "Some of them will look at you like they've been starving. Both are what you're for." She released his chin and smoothed the black bob back from his cheek, tucking it behind his ear with a care that undid him more than any of it. "Now listen to me, my sissy slut. I will protect you tonight. None of the patrons will fuck you. You won't have to suck any cock. Not one."

Warren breathed out. Something in his chest unclenched, and he hated how much he needed to hear it, and he nodded, and the nod was a lie even as he gave it.

"But you'll want to," Dawn said. "Won't you."

He did not answer. His eyes went to the mirror again, to the hem, to the steel, and his mouth opened and closed and the gloss caught the light.

"Won't you," she said again, flat, and it was not a question the second time.

"Yes," Warren whispered. "God. Yes."

"And the men will see you," Dawn went on, and her voice had gone low and pleased, "and their cocks will get hard and throb just looking at you. They'll stand at the bar with their drinks and their hands in their pockets and they'll want to put you on your knees. They won't. But they'll want to, and you'll feel them wanting it, and that—" she drew the leash from her pocket, a thin black strap with a brass clip, and let it dangle, "—that is what I'm taking you out to feel."

She clipped the leash to the collar of the harness, at the back of his neck where the strap crossed, and gave it a small tug that brought his chin up. Warren's whole body followed the pull, up onto the balls of his feet in the mules, and he steadied himself with a hand on her shoulder and felt the heat come off her through the dress.

"There," Dawn said. "Now you look owned." She turned him toward the door and stopped him with a hand flat on his chest, and for a moment her face was close and her blue eyes were not cold at all. "One thing. If it's too much—if you want the coat back on—you say my name twice. Just that. And we come home." She held his eyes. "Do you understand?"

"Yes." Warren's voice caught. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet." The cold came back into her smile, quick as a switch. "I'm still going to show you off until you can't look at yourself without wanting to be looked at. That's not kindness. That's the plan."

She walked him toward the door, the leash slack in her fist, and the coat's hem swung against the backs of his thighs with each step, and the PVC creaked softly at his waist. In the elevator he stood with his hands at his sides and watched their reflections in the brushed steel—her dark and certain, him red and shining and bare-legged—and the car dropped through the building and his stomach dropped with it.

The lobby was empty. The night doorman was at his desk with a newspaper, and Warren fixed his eyes on the revolving door and walked, and the doorman looked up, and Warren felt the look land on him like a hand. "Evening, Ladies" the man said, after a pause that lasted a year. Warren said good evening, and his voice came out high and strange, and Dawn's leash tugged him gently on through the door.

The street was cold. The rain had stopped and left the pavement black and shining, and the city light came off it in long streaks of red and gold. Warren's bare legs broke out in gooseflesh under the coat, and the wind found the hem and lifted it, and he pressed his thighs together and felt the steel cap shift against them.

A black car idled at the curb. Dawn opened the rear door herself and stood aside, and the leash pulled taut and Warren went in, folding himself down onto the leather, and the coat rode up and he had to tug the hem down over his thighs and the tug did nothing at all. Dawn slid in beside him and closed the door and the city sealed away behind tinted glass.

"Driver," Dawn said. "We're in no hurry."

The car pulled out. Warren sat with his knees pressed together and his hands folded in his lap and watched the avenue slide past—the delis, the bars, the people on the sidewalk in their ordinary coats, living their ordinary lives, and he was going past them in a red PVC coat with a leash on his neck and nothing underneath. His cock strained against the flat steel cap and could not rise, and the ache of it spread up into his belly and made his thighs restless.

"You're quiet," Dawn said.

"I'm terrified."

"I know." She laid her hand on his knee, high, at the hem, and her palm was warm on his cold skin. "It'll pass. Or it won't, and you'll be terrified and hard and on display all at once, and you'll find out you can stand it." Her fingers walked up under the hem and found the steel, and she tapped it once with a fingernail, a small bright sound. "You can stand a great deal more than you think, Willow. I've been watching."

The car turned off the avenue and into a narrower street where the lights were fewer and the buildings leaned close, and it slowed before a black-painted door with a brass plate and no sign. A man in a dark coat stood beside it, and he opened the car door, and the cold came in, and Warren heard music from somewhere below the street, a low pulse of bass.

Dawn got out first. She stood on the pavement and held the leash and looked back down at him, and the streetlight found her platinum hair and her wet-look dress and made her shine. "Come on, my sissy pet," she said. "The car's waiting. The night's waiting. And you—" she gave the leash the smallest pull, and Warren came out of the car and stood on the cold pavement in his mules and his red coat with his bare legs shaking, "—you are going to be so beautiful under those lights."

She turned, and the leash drew him after her toward the black door, and the coat's hem swung against his thighs, and the man in the dark coat held the door and did not look at Warren's face at all. He looked at the hem. Warren saw him look, and something in his chest turned over—shame and heat together, the way it always was with her—and he stepped through the door and down the stairs into the bass and the dark.

The air changed at the bottom of the stairs. Leather. Sweat. A cold metallic smell like a struck match. Neon bled along the walls in red and violet, and the floor was black and shining, and the music was in his ribs, and everywhere—everywhere—there were people. Black vinyl creaked. Steel poles caught the light. A woman in a harness laughed at the bar and a man with a shaved head turned to look at her and then past her, at the stairs, at the leash, at the red coat coming down into the room.

Dawn stopped at the foot of the stairs and turned to face him, and her hand closed on the coat's collar. "Last chance for the coat," she said, softly, so only he could hear. "Two names. Say them and we go home."

Warren's mouth was dry. The bass moved through him. He looked past her at the room, at the men and the women and the steel and the dark, and he felt their eyes beginning to find him, and his cock ached in its cage and his thighs were wet with the cold and he did not say her name.

He said, "Take it off."

Dawn smiled, slow and real, and unclipped the leash from the harness collar so the coat could come free. "Good girl," she said, and drew the PVC back off his shoulders.